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Following the trend of fashion’s copyright laws?

So, there are no copyright laws in the fashion industry (only on trademarks and logos).

Blakley says that other creative industries can follows fashion’s trend. This copying culture has forced designers to “up their game” and be more innovative, which has led to designs being too hard to copy. She says that there creative industries can learn from this, can they really?

It got me thinking about the current Apple VS Samsung trial. The battle over a design. The fight over rectangles. If they were apart of the fashion industry, it would be thrown out of court, because there are no copyright laws over design. Maybe this case should be dropped. Both allowed to play with their rectangles however they please. It might force both companies to create more innovate designs?

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9 thoughts on “Following the trend of fashion’s copyright laws?”

I love your connection with fashion! This is great it seriously puts this all in another light- and something I find more relatable!
And personally I find it a little ridiculous that companies fight over shapes and colours, but then again I understand the need to copy right certain things to make your company stand out from the pack.

Wow I never really considered that the fashion industry wouldnt have copyright laws beyond trademarks and logos, which is funny because you can apply the copyright laws to art, and in sure many would see some pieces of fashion to be art. I agree too that the apple Samsung case has taken it too far, but thumbs up to apple for winning, if your going to claim something to be yours you may aswell go all out and have the documentation to back yourself up

This is so true how can there be a copyright in fashion? There are way too many variables involves. As she puts it “Fashion is too utilitarian to apply for copyright” I love the joke she then makes about it too, it really makes you think about how silly copyright can be for example Cadbury owning the colour purple I mean a colour seriously?

Apple ended up winning their case against Samsung, but I think you are spot on the case should have been dropped, at least in relation to appearence. In my opinion it doesn’t really matter if the tablets look similar, if you make a higher quality, more innovative, more useful product than the competition, ultimately consumers will buy it.

Completely agree. Why waste millions of dollars fighting over an ancient shape when it could be invested into designing something better?
Its a stupid question because obviously the reason lies beyond the copy of a mere shape but shouldn’t the importance of a product be more it functions than its appearance? Invest the money wasted on this case into making phones with television remote controls or something..

I watched that whole video… And I am really glad that I did. You’ve found a great example of an industry with no copyright protection and you’ve made a few things much easier for me to understand.
You see, I own a business, where my business partner and I design ski/ snowboard gloves, have them manufactured in China and then we sell them online and through retailers in Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Canada.
We have always been completely clueless about what designs we can and cannot do, and what protection is available or unavailable to our own designs… We have pretty much just stumbled along blindly… Its more fun that way lol.
Your blog post has completely cleared the issue up for us! Thanks 🙂

I’m glad that issue is cleared up for you now! You can be sure that you won’t be getting into any trouble if your designs are similar to someone else’s. Although it might suck if somebody copies yours!

To see the technology industry follow in the footsteps of the fashion industry in regards to copyright would be such an amazing feat. As designers have been forced in such a competitive environment to up their game, so too would those dabbling in technology without having to worry about being sued. Boldrin argues that the competitive age saw some of the greatest advancements, so perhaps a competitive environment free of such copyright and patent laws would yield similar results.